Page Nine

Monday, August 5, 2013

Nineteen firefighters died fighting a forest firein
Arizona earlier this summer. Curiously, almost no one is talking about
why it happened, only that it was a tragedy. Arizona Deputy State
Forestry Director Jerry Payne has been the only one to speak out about
the cause, and he backtracked immediately afterwards, apologizing for
what he said. Heclaimedthat
the superintendent of the Granite Mountain Hotshots violated wildlife
safety protocols while fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30th,
2013, 60 miles north of Phoenix.

According
to Payne, the superintendent’s violations allegedly included not
knowing the location of the fire, failing to have a spotter serve as a
lookout, and leading his crew through thick, unburned vegetation near a
wildfire. There wasn’t a proper escape route in case the fire changed
direction; the firemen would have to bushwhack through thick brush to
retreat. The firefighters lost their lives when the fire suddenly
changed direction and came at them, traveling 12 miles an hour. The fire
destroyed more than 100 of the roughly 700 homes in Yarnell, burning 13
square miles. Flames shot up to 20 feet in the air.

The
account given by Payne is not the whole picture. Firefighting today is
not what it was 20 years ago. Fires 20 years ago moved slowly, at 2-3
mph. Today they move at speeds of 10-12 mph. There are three reasons for
this. First, people are building more homes near or within forests. In
the past, no one dared to build a house in the forest, because there
weren’t fire departments everywhere. As one retired firefighter told me,
“Try to find a photo of a house in the middle of the forest from 100
years ago. You can’t.”